TALLADEGA, Ala. — After his last-lap crash in the October race at Talladega race last year, Dale Earnhardt Jr. went on an angry, bitter rant about restrictor-plate racing.

As he returns to the track this weekend, he recalls those comments and remembers them being a result of knowing at the time that he had just suffered a second concussion in six weeks.

While not letting on that he was injured (or never having revealed publicly his concussion six weeks earlier at Kansas), Earnhardt said NASCAR should build the cars for restrictor-plate races because the teams are just going to crash them.

“It’s really not racing,” Earnhardt said after that race. “It’s a little disappointing how that all went down. … Really, that was all right?

“It’s not safe. Wrecking like that is ridiculous. It’s bloodthirsty if that’s what people want.”

Earnhardt, who went to a doctor two days later after suffering intense headaches, missed two races because of the concussions.

“I’d hate to put the blame on the concussion, but the feeling that I had physically when I got out of the car, I knew that I had set myself back somehow with the concussion thing,” Earnhardt said.

“I was really angry with that because I had spent weeks to where I felt I was great and now I was going to have to take two steps back. … I was really, really mad that I couldn’t just get through that wreck and have that happen.”

Earnhardt now regrets those comments and calls them an over-reaction and not his true feelings. He said they were prompted by the anger from knowing that he was injured in an accident that collected 24 other cars at the end of the race. The accident started when Tony Stewart tried to block Michael Waltrip during a battle for the lead.

“I got up Sunday morning and decided to run 495 miles to crash in the last five miles and now I’m going to go home and I’m all right with that?” Earnhardt said.

Earnhardt’s first crash was Aug. 29 during a tire test at Kansas. Then came the crash at Talladega on Oct. 6 — the first race he had run since Kansas when he felt 100 percent.

“I was so happy to have that feeling and feel like I could get back on track, try to do well in the Chase and put that test crash behind me and get all that in the back of my mind and never worry about it ever again,” Earnhardt said.

“Now that wasn’t the case after that race.”

While Talladega is the track that put his 2012 season on hold, Earnhardt said he doesn’t think of the track in a bad way.

“If I drive the way I need to drive, I’m not in position to be in that wreck,” Earnhardt said. “I’m up front where I’m supposed to be. That’s my feeling inside.

“I’m supposed to be up front and when I get swept up in a crash running 18th, I didn’t do something right and I put myself in that position.”